revelation

Today, I walked into an antique shop. I like to browse the old things—“treasures” the man at the shop called them.

I bought a pair of clip-on earrings, but I can’t even wear them because of my gauges, and they hurt my ears anyways. I got them because they remind me of my grandma. Both grandmas & their old jewelry boxes full of large, heavy clip-on earrings.

I bought a paperweight. It’s a delicate, egg-shaped mauve: heavy. It seemed like the thing to do—like every writer should have a nice glass paperweight. Also, it reminded me of 1984—buying a paperweight from an antique shop.

I have a problem with books; I even bought one of the four total at the antique shop of all places. It’s not that I want my life to echo the books I have loved; I certainly don’t. (Besides, who ever remembers the end of most books? You don’t; you remember the details in the middle. When your life is over, you’re just dead, and people have no choice but to remember that.) I love books because they let you relive the past, though not your own & often not even a past that ever was.

I went to my favorite used bookshop. I purchased the complete stories of Flannery O’Connor. I decided to read one out loud to Pickle this evening. I was about a paragraph—half a page, maybe—into a story when I froze. I suddenly remembered reading O’Connor’s “Revelation” out loud to Derek in the hospital. Then I remembered listening to her short stories on audiotape during the long commute back and forth to school after Derek died. I can hear the man on the tape’s voice reading the title “Everything that Rises Must Converge”. Most days I didn’t hear much more than the title; it was just noise to drown out all else but the passing lights on the highway.

hockey.sticks.

I’ve been delving into the 665 new songs on my iPod by putting the “Recently Added” playlist on shuffle.

A song called “Hockey Skates” came on. I started imagining that I could learn it and play it at the next rooftop shindig. The line, “I am tired of playing defense, & I don’t even have hockey skates…” caught my ear. I thought that if I were a real musician with stage presence who could talk and play and offer funny ramblings as interludes, I would say something like, “That’s a lie because I do have skates, but they’re just roller blades that I got for $5 at a flea market in California…”

Then I started thinking I left my hockey stick in Pennsylvania. Where is it? In the basement? In the barn? I’ve never actually played hockey. My dad made the hockey stick for me out of the sheets of tight-layered wood that he picked up from the dumpster at an old job. He’d bring home truckloads of it, and we used it to make anything and everything, including a hockey stick and the floor my tortoise’s mansion.

With two daughters, a hockey stick seems like an unlikely thing for a father to make. But we had bunnies that we kept in little habitats at the bottom of the hill. Their homemade plywood & chicken wire cages sat between the barn and the old school bus that we used as a storage shed. The barn had a cement patio in front of it about 7x10 square feet that would freeze over in winter’s ice.

My sister and I would trek down the hill with a bucket of hot water that we would pour over the bunny’s water bowls that had frozen solid. We’d then find the best sticks from the edge of the woods. We’d take the frozen water blocks and use them as pucks and hit the ice block across our tiny cement arena. It wasn’t hard to get a goal, but in a one-on-one, the small play space suited our ‘teams’ well.

We’d play until our noses ran so fast we couldn’t keep up or until the ice blocks were so bulked in snow that they wouldn’t move or until the ice blocks were nothing but a few chips or until the dark swallowed our surroundings and left us there under the barn light. I had to anticipate when Katlin would start running—she would always beat me up the hill, sometimes holding the door shut behind her when she made it inside, so that I was in the cold dark alone, just long enough for me to cry or start hollering up at the living room window for our parents so she would let me in.

We’d hang our snow clothes or wet clothes and boots in front of the wood burner, and heat two of the race began: up the stairs out of the basement. Only she couldn’t hold that door shut, with our parents right there, so she would just slam it behind her.

We were a funny pair: her the good older sister, doing anything to get away from me, the whiny little.

So all of this, just from the line of a song.

We’ve since grown much, and for the most part, reconciled. I bought the skates while visiting her. We were out for our first rare chance at sister time since she married last November.

Now that the cold is making its way into Seattle and Katlin is back in Pennsylvania, well, winter is just different. The dark is different. Seattle hardly even sees snow, if at all. The bus is now gone from our yard, and both tom-boyish daughters are gone from the house. The bunnies are gone too—we let them go into the wild after eight years of up and down the hill to feed them.

My mom is home for the next few weeks, staying off her feet after surgery. My aunt lives just up the road (as does most of my mother’s family), but she has been going over every morning and helping Mom around the house and caring for her.

Growing up, I thought my sister and I would fight forever, that we’d always be rivals. In college, I thought we’d always be best friends. Now, I don’t know what we are: we’re both just getting by and loving and hating each other from afar and trying to figure out where we land on this big spinning sphere. For now, I’m West, and she’s East, but I like to think that someday, we’ll be able to see each other’s homes through the naked trees in winter, and we’ll take care of each other and drink tea and play cards and laugh about being kids who played hockey with ice blocks and sticks. 

Pickle, we're not in Kansas anymore.

October brings the official crisp of fall in strong gusts that steal away my rain hat and leave me grasping my jacket closed with one hand and holding on to Pickle’s leash with the other.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore,” I tell Pickle. It really does feel that way. I don’t know where I live anymore, but I’m ready to go home. Where is my Kansas?

Our community is replicating, which is great, but I don’t want to have to choose between two groups of people whom I love. We’ve had a lot of disagreement about it, particularly roommate-wise. I keep finding myself not even thinking about it because I’ve been thinking for a while now about migrating to a different community entirely.

I love my community. So much. But after some roommate conversations and thoughts of looking ahead, I am realizing that I am in an in-between migration stage. I want to move to Belltown—one step closer to downtown, and God-willing, one bus away from work.

I really have no idea how I would make it work. I would love to live alone, well, as alone as one can be with a dog, a turtle, and a fish. Unfortunately, pets don’t help pay the rent. I’ve got until March to figure it out. I’m trying not to worry about it now or even to pretend to make too many plans. They all change quickly anyways—like how Laura and I chatted about moving to Belltown together next year, which simply isn’t happening anymore.

But there is this community transition. It just seems like a good time to go, but until a decision is made and acted upon, I am a dry leaf hanging onto the branch and shaking in the wind. When I let go, where will I land?

oneyearlater

It would rain today.

My roommate now has a boyfriend, so our Friday night movies are officially over as marked by today—rain. No good to do much outside as the first of fall’s gloom settles in: a teaser of what’s to come. I’m starting to understand Seattle’s seasons.

I tried to make plans but failed. Most of them in my head, making up reasons that people couldn’t come over or me just not wanting to go out. So I didn’t. Pickle and I stayed in.

“Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective.”

Pickle & I, well, I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower. There is a small list of reasons this movie ended up in my DVD player:

1. the book has been a favorite since middle school

2. the sound track is perfect

3. Emma Watson

4. it was on sale at Target

5.  it makes Pittsburgh real—it drives me right through the Fort Pitt tunnel: sense of home

Tomorrow, my parents will pack a big ol’ truck and come to Seattle. They are bringing the rest of my life out. The material things, anyways—the bookshelf my dad made many moons ago; the turtle house my dad and I made two years ago; my pet tortoise who lives in the turtle house, of course; a kiln by which I have yet to make new things; the books that have comforted me like a wool blanket—heavy and warm. They’re bringing all of it out here just for me. So many miles.

I can’t help but think that this is it—the one-year mark. Monday will make it official—August 5^th.  Remember how a year ago, I was climbing in the window of my wretched first place here? I'm only on my third apartment...My “plan” was to come here, get a degree, and leave to sunnier skies. Well, I got here, and that’s about as much of that list as I’ve accomplished. I have no intention of leaving anything soon.

Funny how determined we can be once our minds are made up. Like how it had to be that I would stay home with Derek. Like how I had to graduate early and move far away. Like how that far away had to be Seattle, not Arizona.

Lately, when I look at the Space Needle at night, wholly illuminated such that it glows more than the others buildings, I can only think it must be fake. It cannot really be there; I cannot really be here. How did I get here? How has a whole year passed already? I guess it’s really only like eleven months actually in Seattle if you count all of my road trips and escapes; nearly a whole month on the road, out of the city.

And here I am preparing to sell my car. No more open road. This country girl is ready for a new kind of adventure: full immersion in the city. We already live in Uptown, walking distance to all we need; bus to everything we don’t; bike to everything in-between. When I bought my car three years ago, I told myself that I would drive it until it died—it’s a ’99 Subaru and had 51,000 miles on it at the time. 40-some thousand miles later, it’s still running strong, but I just don’t need it.

That car carried me back and forth to Waynesburg for a whole semester. It lost a mirror parked out on the street there. It got its door jammed in the day of Derek’s funeral. It drifted through the winding hills of Kentucky and the unseen horizon of Texas and the brilliant New Mexican stars and back again. Then through the National Parks and Monuments on the drive West to Seattle. Then through snow storms and desert in the same trip to Phoenix and back.

Damn.

In the movie, they’re listening to “Heroes” by David Bowie and driving through the Fort Pitt tunnel, and they come out to the Pittsburgh skyline and the bridges and the signs. “Monroeville>>>>>” I think of the times I took that exit, the brilliance of the city that I didn’t see too often.

One morning in particular comes to mind. I dropped my parents off at the airport. It was two weeks before Derek died. I had just gotten back from Italy a week or two before. The world was new to me. Derek was going to get better. I was home again. We were going have a great semester together. This was how the world was always supposed to be.

It was four in the morning. The sky was pink with the strange light of dawn not yet peaked coming over Appalachia. The city was quiet, still. The freeway was a glorious open-air speed path before me, unlike the tight curves that led to the stuffy hospital every day.

My iPod was on shuffle. The windows were down. “On the Bus Mall” by the Decemberists came on, a song I had somehow never noticed.

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

Laundry Day

I wrote myself an agenda of what needed done today: go to the bank, go to the AT&T store, go to the laundromat, dust my bedroom ('please/finally,' I had written), write a cover letter for a job. Guess how many of them got done. I went to the bank, but it was closed, and they got a new ATM that I couldn't figure out how to deposit in. I went to the AT&T store to ask about my lack of service at my apartment, and they just asked me to call customer service. As I was supposed to be driving to the laundromat, I changed my mind. I could see sky; I wasn't going to let that go to waste.

When I arrived at Discovery Park, the East Lot was full, so I went to the North Lot. I parked and pulled some warmer attire out of my laundry bag. I grabbed a map and started off, my muscles still sore from Thursday's football game, but it felt good to be moving and breathing the sharp air. 

I started at the Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center. I walked around the building to this patio viewpoint of the Sound. Large bodies of water comfort me, and the clear sky felt like summer.

After twenty minutes of walking along a paved road, I found myself back in the parking lot and quite confused. The map is ridiculous to understand, yet I laughed at my mistake. What a goof. Soon enough, I found my trail entrance. 

Signs indicated that there would be water, including three "reflection" ponds. 

Small bridges led the way over the bog. I was surprised to find stairs too.

I am in love with the way that light teases the plants that live deeper in the woods.

And moss; I love moss.

Reflections are actually quite baffling. When the signs said "reflection" ponds, I immediately thought of Annie Dillard. I imagined myself going there to explore and mentally reflecting on my surroundings. Instead, I was amazed to find the world reflecting back at me, an upside down array of trees so smooth that it could be the real thing; has gravity fooled me? The picnic table rests on its own Platonic form. 

First world problems: I want to be a pack-light hiker & a photographer; therefore, good photos of ducks get sacrificed when the fixed 50mm lens & 10-22mm are chosen over the 55-200mm.

The biggest leaf I have ever seen. I thought these trees made me feel big because the Redwoods made me feel so small, so normal sized trees aren't so intimidating. Then I ran into this leaf. And as the light reveals, it's with-leaf-child. That or it's a cannibal leaf and ate a fellow leaf for lunch. 

And just like that, the light got stronger, trying to hold on to day as the dark sank into the soggy grasses.  It was only 3:45.

And South Beach pulled me: I cannot resist the sound of waves. I sat on a driftwood log and read selections from Poems for a Small Planet: Contemporary American Nature Poetry out loud to passersby. I'll share two that stood out to me today.

This is a Blessing, This is a Curse

No sound from the stone,

which is to say

that I am deaf at last.

I have prayed for this and then

regretted praying.

No voice from the depths

to rise like fish and leap

for my ear.

This is a blessing for my soul

that would not presume.

This is a curse for my heart

that needs to hear.

-Chard DeNiord

Painting It In

     (Remembering Lesley Parry)

Wake up at six o'clock. We're out to sea.

Nothing beyond that fence and slatted gate

but a grey wave and plume-like shapes that could be

flaws in the canvas or unmixed pigment in paint.

Stones, blurred poppies, a wheelbarrow full of grass

affirm a foreground. The world must exist out there.

People must be getting up and getting washed,

putting the kettle on, picking up a newspaper.

Somewhere it must matter terribly not to be late,

not to miss the limousine to the airport,

not to be missed when the finance committee votes,

when the training course commences, not be left out.

But somewhere is hard to believe when it's not invented, 

when the world blindly refused to admit detail.

All that's required is pastoral: sheep among stunted

rowans; for background, eroded 'Moelfre' or 'bald hill.'

The thing's been done so many times. Imagine

brushing the lichen's pearly quartz over the rocks,

now the shocking pink foxgloves, painting them in,

old fashioned belles de joie, drunk on their stalks.

What if today decides never to take off its veil,

never to palliate art with a grand show

of perspectives up the valley? More likely all we'll

get is light's first lesson, an application of gesso,

a whiteout of air--sweet, soft, indestructible,

the cloud of unknowing reluctant to create the known.

Hills, stones, sheep, trees are, as yet, impossible.

And when things are unmade, being also feels less alone.

-Anne Stevenson

When my eyes focused as I looked up, I realized that it was getting a little too dark, such that if I tarried any longer, it would be uncomfortably lacking light as I attempted to follow the confusing paths back to my car. As I started walking, a light rain began. I decided to put away my camera and put on my raincoat, just in case it started to get heavy. I sat my bookbag on the ground and bent over, putting away my lens and camera, and as I did I heard a clunk! 

I didn't think much of it; my phone had been in my pocket and had fallen many times, and as advertised, my iPhone has put up with a lot (I once accidentally threw it across a parking lot because I lost my grip while I was swinging my arms; it survived with only a barely noticeable scratch). I was just very glad that my camera was safely packed away. As I went to pick up the phone, I realized that the entire front was shattered. 

Somehow, it still works. The cracks are getting whiter and wider as the pressure of my tapping fingers tests the glass's durability in its fragile state. A small piece of glass stuck in my thumb as I sent a text message to my sister. I actually find it hilarious. It's a sign; it's absolutely a sign--I've been talking for months about how terrible my reliance on my iPhone is. Apparently, it doesn't like me either. The ironic part is that today, I went to the AT&T store to figure out how to improve service at my apartment. The woman called me this evening to do a "troubleshooting." Whether it failed because it's just impossible to get service here or because my phone is now a glass mosiac, I'm not sure, but the call still would not connect when she attempted to call afterwards. She left me one partial message that didn't get past hello and one long, irritated message that said "as I said in my previous message...". Listen, I'm not ignoring your call; I just cannot connect. 

As one of my favorite Weepies tunes goes, "I want to live a simple life." Maybe I'm closer to that; I spent the day in the woods and the waters' edge reading poetry and the one piece of technology that I so despise took a tumble. Coincidence? I think not. 

Needless to say, my bag of laundry still sits in my car and that job application is merely a thought. Maybe tomorrow.

It is well.

Yesterday morning, I slept in. When I finally rolled out of bed, I went through my usual routine, which ended with me actually getting dressed. As I stripped off my night clothes, I looked at the selection on my floor. Yup, same jeans as I've worn the past week...mhmm, wore this shirt yesterday...yup, this jacket smells clean enough. Look at that! I cleaned my room and got dressed at the same time! Now that's economical!

I told myself that I wanted to enjoy my last day off before official employment. (I also told myself that I wanted to wear as few clothes as possible so that I would only have to go to the laundromat once-a-month.) I stepped outside and was shocked--the sun was out! And I don't mean "out" like it was when I excitedly told Katlin over the phone, "I can see light behind the clouds!"; I mean it was fully exposed, as were my eyes, which I fear will shrink into black spots accustomed to dark spaces like those of a mole. I got to wear sunglasses on my walk to the store!

My excitement for such beautiful weather--in the 60s!--in November lasted all day. Certain that Mt. Rainier would be out, I biked down to Kerry Park and sat on a bench reading Annie Dillard until the sun went behind a cloud for the evening, an instant chill which sent me biking home. And no, Mt. Rainier was hidden behind clouds that mirrored its snow-capped shadow. Somehow, even when the whole sky is clear, there is so often a full cloak surrounding the mountain; it only shows its face occasionally, making each appearance a majestic display.

And it was.

I woke up this morning as someone way too excited to be going to a thing called work. I've just been waiting and growing weary, and now it was here! A job! I had my clothes laid out, my lunch packed; I was ready. I tried to go to bed early last night, but of course failed; I even woke up at an ungodly hour and couldn't sleep. It was like anxiety over the first day of school, back when I was excited to go to school. (I wish the excitement would stay.)

Regardless, I was determined to have a good day. As I left the house, tea in-hand, I smiled. I smiled as I walked to the bus. I went through the checklist in my head and realized, holy shit--I don't even have a pencil. Or paper. Or a pen. What kind of writer goes into a writing job without any writing utensils?! I looked at my watch; the bus would arrive in three minutes, and I still had to get to the stop--no time to go back. I walked past the church, where a man was mopping just inside the door, and I honestly contemplated asking if I could borrow a pencil from a pew. (Don't worry, I didn't; I reasoned that it would be O.K.--chill.)

So I kept smiling. As the bus slid down Queen Anne Ave North like a snake clinging to the ground yet propelling on, I looked over my left shoulder. The sky was orange sherbet over the Cascades. The Space Needle stood just to the left of, you guessed it, shimmering Mt. Rainier. I gasped at the purple against orange palette. Where have I been all my life that I have never seen such colors? That my life has been coated in the same backdrop of green and brown forest?

The cold air caught my exhale in a steam in front of my face as I waited for my transfer. I pretended like the air was fresh from Rainier, even though it stunk in the exhaust of the passing motorists. Cities are strange places.

But I continued to smile, even through the sharp pang of diesel thickening in my lung. When my bus arrived, I was shocked to find it nearly full. I scurried to the first open seat I saw and attempted to sit down. However, I dropped my tea in the process, which promptly landed, stuck, upside down over my book bag. It sent a steady stream of hot tea over everything I had brought with me. I wiped my wet hands on my dress pants (ladylike, as always) and assessed the damage. I looked around--no one had seen: that or they didn't care; my bag had absorbed the liquid before it could reach the floor, so at least I had no mess to clean up. I shrugged it off and looked on the bright side--my book bag would smell good!

Alright, alright. Fast-forward a few bus stops, and I arrived at work. I talked to another first-day temp in the lobby and noticed that she didn't constantly smile when she spoke. I tried to do the same. I let my cheeks relax and tried to talk with some expression other than geeked out. I failed and ended up with a puppet grin as she continued to appear uninterested in my Pennsylvania talk--she was from L.A. and had bigger stories to tell about working as a fashion stylist for high-end commercials.

We waited for the woman from HR to direct us to 'our stations'. When she finally did, she handed us our fancy little electronic door key card swipers and pointed at the desk and said, "Here you go! Good luck!" I scanned the desk: a mug! (there must be coffee somewhere...), Post-It notes, A TIN OF PENS AND PENCILS!, scissors (why would I need scissors?), a stapler, staples, paperclips, a laptop, a separate keyboard and mouse, another monitor, and a packet. I started by tacking my name to the (lime!) green board behind my desk then sat down and began reading the packet. I started the instructions, which of course, failed. My computer wasn't working right; error, yada yada yada. At first, I thought they were crazy to just drop us off the cliff like that (there was another girl starting as copywriter, too).

Finally, another copywriter filled in as our mentor. She spent all morning showing us the ropes and how to run the programs and register for everything. I caught on quickly; I was eager to learn. In the afternoon, we were given some assignments--write titles and bullets for several events; follow the formatting in the packet. Okie doke. I began typing. My partner newbie did the same. Every so often, she would turn to me and say, "Do you remember how to do ....?" Sure; I'd show her and go back to my computer. It felt good to have answers; it felt good to be needed. I finished my first set of assignments and messaged my copy lead (we all IM each other, even though we're in the same room; odd but convenient, I guess). She sent me more work, which I did and sent it back to the writers to fill in with copy.

"You work fast," my copy lead told me as she let me go early for the day. My partner sat still typing at her desk.

"I'm just really excited, and I think I'm getting the formatting better; my last assignment seems so different from my first!"

"I'll give you feedback tomorrow so that you know what can be improved." And I'm really excited; I'm a format geek. I love lists. I love alphabetizing. I love matching the letters and numbers of the SKUs to each other to upload to the website!

I felt bad leaving my new friend still working. Was I lazy to leave early? Had I done enough? I did have a lot of down time... She was very quiet and seemed to move in a methodical rhythm, her pace tagging along. I kept thinking that I was going to be her--when I pictured myself going in to work, I expected to be nervous and afraid to ask my supervisor questions. I expected to question every word I wrote down, thinking I must be wrong. I'm still wondering how I wasn't, but I certainly don't see it as a bad thing either; I'm sure that her work was much more careful than mine. Different processes, I guess? Regardless, I said good night and see you tomorrow and rinsed out my mug for tomorrow's tea. (That's right; there's tea and hot chocolate and coffee and a pool table and chess and beer and cookies. It's crazy.)

As I walked to the bus stop in the center of downtown, maybe a mile away, I enjoyed the lights (how did it get to be dark already?) and the whir of all of the people leaving their jobs for the evening. Two men were walking in the same direction as me. I caught the tail end of a conversation.

"You were right; it's not this way."

"What's that?"

"You were right."

"What?"

"YOU WERE RIGHT." How we so love to hear it; I laughed, and they guy noticed. "You didn't hear that," he joked.

"I've been there," I said, and from there, we kept talking as we walked, but the conversation was so odd; we spoke as if we were good friends and new each other well; he described his day to me and I to him and soon enough, he looked at a building and realized he and his friend had passed the address they were searching for and headed off in the other direction without even telling his name! People are so funny! Though I didn't tell him my name either.

And I found that I was still smiling. I came home to find TWO packages at my door; one, a pair of discount rain boots that I've been so looking forward to (I will learn to love the rain.) and the other a box of books sent from my mom in PA, even though they weren't expected to get here until Saturday! I took off my jacket and ripped open both boxes. I put on my rainboots and stood in my room taking each book out of the box, saying, "Yes! Yes! YES!" They were all the right ones (though there is no such things a wrong book). I've been telling my parents that I needed my books because even some that I've already read simply comfort me from the shelves. It just feel so good to have so many arrays of words within reach to reference to my favorite lines and read my marginal notes that I don't remember writing.

I arranged the books carefully on my shelves. Poetry down here, uh huh. Nice! Now, nature to the left, then religion, then Dillard, Hemingway, Didion, Rilke, and all the rest of the singles who don't get special placement by author because they're loners. They don't make the top few whom I can't get enough of, least not yet anyways--I haven't read all of the singles yet. Ahhh, books. I just want to open them and absorb them and read them all at once. It's a sickness; it really is. The only cure is a cup of tea in one hand and book #1 in the other, a quiet space, and a chunk of a few hours.

Suffice to say I read for the evening, but I did replace the tea with a newly invented vegan pumpkin banana smoothie that tasted like skinny pumpkin pie and left me with this huge spurt of energy right before bed, where I should have been sleeping an hour ago (two?). What the hell! Tomorrow's Friday!

So all in all, it was a good day. The best. I feel great, and I hope that it lasts. I pray that it lasts. I feel like this is what I've been waiting for: to feel fulfilled.

It is well with my soul.

P.S. It turns out I did need the scissors at work. While I was waiting and waiting for a new assignment to be sent to me, I decided to make the most of a scrap of a Post-It from the lovely arrangement of notes and hints I had posted along my monitor (wow, what a nerd). I folded a triangle and cut off the excess to make a square, which then magically turned into a little birdy that sits on my desk. Quite a productive day!